December 19, 2011

Stress…A Necessary Part of The Holidays, And Life?

With the holidays quickly approaching and still so much to do this time of year, chances are, you like many people may be feeling stressed. Stress will never go away, and you may be surprised to know it is actually needed. That doesn’t stress you out does it?!

It’s when you mismanage stress or when you don’t manage it at all that it creates trouble. While too much stress can be mentally, emotionally and physically disruptive, (cortisol, a stress related hormone, when overproduced leads to heart disease, which is the #1 killer of women in the U.S.) not having enough stress can reduce your motivational resources and your energy levels.

Finding the right amount of stress to achieve optimal levels of performance is no easy task, and your ideal stress level is unique to you. Learning how to move from a victim of uncontrollable circumstances to a manager of your own priorities will help stop the devastating effects stress has on your mind and body, and while you will never be able to get off that speeding bus, you can take over the wheel and slow it down.

Creating balance in your activities is not possible. Quit wasting your time. When it comes to life activities there is no such thing as balance, only priorities. If you strive for balance you’ll only add to your stress levels, not reduce them, but if you change your priorities you will immediately start reducing your stress and feel more in control of how you utilize your time.

Successfully dealing with life’s pressures, demands and hassles means appropriately responding and managing the tasks at hand in order of priority. Create a list of what you value and need to prioritize in the next few days. (YOU should and need to be on that list.) Assign each priority a chunk of time and then live that schedulized list. Follow that time-framed list with another list of new priorities or re-prioritized activities and go live that list.

If you try to balance all of the things in your life that demand your time and attention you’ll never succeed. If you prioritize the items demanding your time and attention and respond accordingly, you will accomplish a reduction in your stress levels and a reduction in the speed of that bus.

With presentations to 30,000+ executives in eight countries, AmyK Hutchens serves as an Intelligent Activist and business strategist to leaders around the globe. She is a former senior EVP of operations for a leading sales and marketing firm, director of education for Europe and Australia for a 900 million dollar consumer products company, and chosen member of National Geographic's Educator Advisory Committee. To learn more about her firm’s proprietary Leadership Links program visit www.amyk.com. Follow AmyK on Twitter @AmyKinc.

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Good article. Thanks! There are really 2 types of stress: stress that is productive and improves one's performance and long-term stress that drains one's life energy and causes depression in the long run.
Basically, if you keep the productive stress going for a long time, it will turn into the negative stress and cause eventual depression.